View full sizeRoss William Hamilton/The OregonianThese days, TriMet has budget issues affecting all who ride.

The health care that TriMet workers receive is not an outrage (contrary to what the May 13 front-page story "Is TriMet about to drive over a cliff?" implies). TriMet workers need and deserve excellent, free health care. So do workers everywhere else.

If there is a villain in this story, it is not the TriMet workers or their union or their board of directors or general manager who agreed to give them a benefit they need and deserve. It is the insurance company, which is siphoning off a huge portion of the riders' and taxpayers' money to administer something that does not need administration, and paying its executives millions of dollars annually. The way to solve this problem is not to take away the TriMet workers' health care. It is to provide a similar health care system for everyone, a single-payer plan that takes the insurance companies' hands out of our pockets.

Free, universal health care for all is entirely affordable in the United States. Civilized countries including Canada, Taiwan and Germany have such plans. The state of Vermont enacted a single-payer plan for its citizens last year, and there is an effort to do the same in Oregon, hopefully as a preliminary step before the U.S. government decides to join the civilized world.

Please join the movement. And let's cheer TriMet for taking care of its workers, rather than attacking it.